Monday, November 5, 2012

Mittens!

I've got a new pattern out! The Gingerbread Men Mittens pattern is available for purchase on my Ravelry pattern page here!!

A couple of years ago, I made some Fair Isle mitts for my sister-in-law and just fell in love with this technique! There are so many beautiful patterns in the world for this project. However, what I really wanted was a pair of mittens with gingerbread men. Alas! There was no such pattern. So I wrote my own, bought some yarn, and got started on knitting them. As it tends to do, life got busy and I set this project aside.

Fast forward a year, and I began to work with Dianne at Windy Valley yarns, going to all the Stitches conventions. One of my tasks as part of Dianne's team was to sit at the "yarn tasting" table and knit with all the yummy yarns, and encourage other people to try them. As I was knitting with her merino yarn, I realized it would be a perfect match for this pattern that I had sitting at home. I left one of the shows with a ball of cream and a ball of brown, and immediately got to work on this pattern again. It turned out to be just the breath of fresh air this project needed, and they turned out so well.

I had a bit of yarn left over, so it would be enough to make the cuffs and thumbs in completely in either color, but I played around and made the thumbs one of each. There's also a heart on the thumb gusset!

I was hesitant to give them away, but I knew Dianne could use them as a sample so I traded her for some more yarn - I think my next pair is going to be red and white! As a matter of fact, I enjoyed working with this yarn so much that I purchased a few more colors so that I can make another pair of mittens from my Ravelry favorites.

This pattern includes the information needed to make these mittens including a full two-color chart for the cuff, thumb gusset, inside palm (lattice), and of course the gingerbread man chart! You can get this yummy, fingering weight merino at Windy Valley's website. I so enjoyed making these. Let me know if you knit some; as most designers do, I love seeing what knitters do with my patterns!